Here are the decisions we have to make before starting this season. Getting these voted on now will save us time at the auction draft.

Some basic FOR and AGAINST arguments are also provided.

I. Corrections and Cleanup A. Free Agent Eligibility Fix "Fullmer" loophole: Eligible free-agents are players who are on the active MLB Roster or disabled-list. We need to clarify the point at which players' eligibility is determined as he comes in and out of the eligible player pool... Here is the range of alternatives to vote on: Eligible any time during the transaction week (as it was ruled last year) This has the "advantage" of not providing a safety net to the owner who requests a player who's been sent down during the week. Ruled this way, the owner must pay the price for not paying attention. But it may not be the best way. Must be eligible at the transaction deadline, as near as can be determined while processing stats. This puts the eligibility question closest to the actual time that he is picked up. That is, the window between "Did a move happen" and when I process stats is fairly small which helps determine if it happened on time or not. Commish voids moves that aren't valid at processing time if I can't tell if the MLB move happened by earlier in the day (2pm) or not. (If we change, this is the preferred change). Must be eligible (Monday) night before deadline, otherwise similar to #2. Must be eligible the PREVIOUS transaction report (so that the current reports will list all eligible players) which has the advantage of everyone always knowing the list of eligible players, but the disadvantage of not being able to pickup players called up from the minors during the current week until they are listed on a report. New callups will be in the majors between one and two full weeks before they may be acquired. FOR:Commish thinks option 2 gives us the best results. Option 1 has too many loopholes. Option 3 is harder for Commish than Option 2 because the time window for errors is larger. Option 4 is the most deterministic, but has drawbacks. VOTE: 1, 2, 3 or 4

B. Roster Freeze Fix "Alou" rule: Proposal from Brewsers and Duckbills: If a player is traded to the AL, sent to the minors, waived, released, or goes on the DL between the protect deadline and the morning of the draft, or suffers an injury sufficient to likely cause a DL status, then the owner who protected him has the right to undo the protect by notifying the commissioner before the start of the draft. This adds the value of the contract back to his draft budget. This does not apply to guaranteed contracts (as they are already covered by an existing rule), does not entitle the team to a substitute roster protection, and is limited to one drop per team. FOR: If you keep a $35 player, and he goes down with serious treadmill injury on 3/29 (call it the Moises Alou rule), you shouldn't have to go to the draft already feeling like you're playing for next year because you couldn't drop him. AGAINST: Those are the breaks of the game. VOTE: YES or NO The rule could start this year I think because we're voting before roster freeze, but in case you disagree... ALSO VOTE: RULE CAN START THIS YEAR OR MUST WAIT UNTIL 2001 IF APPROVED NOTE: I'd like this rule, if passed, to be combined for next year with the one saying you can dump any ineligible "G"-contract player, so that you'd be allowed only 1 qualified player drop whether G or non-G. This would continue in my goal of simplifying rules. I'll save the vote on that part for just after the season starts; we've got enough to do for now. C. Auction Passes Fix passing rule: The purpose of the "3 passes until under R$20 left" then unlimited that I proposed last year was to limit lazy passing, not prohibit strategic passing. It seemed to me last year some teams with $$$ left, but limited spots available, were hampered by not being able to pass when they needed to. Roster spots are just as scarce a resource as R$ near the end of an auction. I propose the rule read "Owners are limited to 3 passes until under R$20 or under 5 spots left to buy." FOR: Allows passing if you happen to have money left over near the end. AGAINST: May allow more passing VOTE: YES or NO

II. Change Proposals A. Roster Freeze Proposal from Duckbills: Shorten Roster Freeze period; don't need whole week. Proposed Freeze lists due earliest of Tuesday noon before draft or weekend before Opening Day. FOR: Allows extra time for deciding on who to freeze AGAINST: Need the time to digest other owners' freeze lists before draft. VOTE: YES or NO B. Allow Minors flexibility Proposal from Wholly Moses: Allow players sent to minors to use the 3 "DL" spots as well. (We'd use designation of "Minors" for these moves to avoid confusion.) Still a max of 3 players on "DL" and "Minors" combined. The 3 "Bench" spots are unchanged. FOR: Extra roster flexibility when players bounce between majors and minors. Minors players used to be able to be saved on the reserve list. AGAINST: Minors players can still be saved on the bench if they are worth keeping. Putting them on DL instead of Bench allows space for extra Bench players. This will remove a few players from free-agent pool. VOTE: YES or NO C. Eliminate "CALLUP" move Proposal from Commish: Simplify roster rules by eliminating callups. This should have been done last year, had I thought about it, as callups are related to reserve lists, roster ties, and two-week rules, all of which we eliminated in 1999. We'd use FAAB bids for all new players (except waiver claim and trading of course) To avoid the potential problem then about running out of FAAB and needing to replace an injury, the first R$5 of every FAAB bid (injury-related or not, I won't have to care) would then not be charged to your FAAB. The FAAB becomes a priority bucket that you spend as you choose. This then allows a bid of R$5 which does not impact your FAAB, so you can always replace an injury at the minimum priority. The maximum bid then changes to remaining FAAB+5. The rebate for a traded-to-AL player changes to salary-5. EXAMPLE: Maulers want to claim free agent X and bids R$8. Krushers want to use free agent X to replace an injured player and bids R$9. Krushers get free agent X with R$9A contract, and deduct $4 from their FAAB. FOR: Callups should have been removed last year with the reserve list. They add to confusion now that the reserve list and roster ties are gone. Takes Commish extra time each week to deal with callup issues. Two types of moves now exist to acquire the same pool of players. This consolidates them. Makes Commish's life easier. You lose the priority of a "callup" over bids from $5 to $9, but I'm not sure that's worth the hassle. AGAINST: If you think we need the additional priority of a callup move. I really can't think of a reason not to approve this. VOTE: YES or NO NOTE: Starting FAAB may need to change, but based on what I've looked at from last year, we should be OK -- we can revisit for next year if change is needed. It may need to go down because of the $5 free each time now, or it may need to go up because previous callup-type moves are subject to the budget now if bid goes higher than $5 to get additional priority. D. Proposal to Draft Bench positions Bench Draft: There is a proposal from several teams to draft the 3 bench positions on Auction Day, instead of staging them in 1 per week using transaction day. It was asked for last year also as a part of the roster rule changes, but I wanted to get the Bench/DL approved first and get some experience with it first. The Bench Draft would be done in 3 rounds of simple draft picks. Drafting order determined (pre-draft) randomly for this year. Order reverses in each round (a snake draft). Drafted players are assigned salaries of R$10 for first round picks, R$5 for second round, R$2 for third round. The decreasing salary takes no extra work to do and it allows for a bit more strategy and the opportunity to pick up a cheap player if he makes it to the 3rd round. FOR: Drafting bench is pretty standard for leagues that use the bench. Drafting 3 bench positions each will take roughly 20 minutes after the auction, (according to the Duckbills who have done this before). We already have our draft preparation done and have names remaining ready to go and know what spots we have to cover disabled players, weak positions, etc. We will know exactly who we're getting and have them available on the roster immediately. The current way of stocking the Bench means we all have to research and list a whole bunch of players each of 3 weeks to hopefully get one of them each time. It takes time from each of us each of the first 3 weeks, and it makes Commish's work harder those weeks. The signing of the Bench also comes out of FAAB money. AGAINST: It will take extra time at the draft. VOTE: YES or NO NOTE: If approved, we can vote just after the season starts on doing the bench-draft in reverse-standings order for following years. E. First transaction deadline tie-breaker Change for 2000 The first transaction deadline last year was held 1 day after opening day. Teams received reverse-standings tie-breaker priority for the Week 1 transactions based on standings made up of a single day of games, which is a bad basis for determining team's strength. Before last year, when we used the reserve-list roster, teams were allowed to "CALLUP" injury replacements at the draft, and these were done at RANDOM priority. We need to choose another tie-breaker priority for Week 1's when less than a full week determines the standings. Choices are RANDOM tie-breakers (coin flip or random draw), and REVERSE-STANDINGS-FROM-PREVIOUS-YEAR. Choose one of the following: RANDOM FOR: Bottom teams have enough advantage for the next year by their ability to keep more players REVERSE-LAST-YEAR, but use RANDOM for this year since last year's standings are already decided. REVERSE-LAST-YEAR VOTE: CHOICE 1, 2, or 3 F. Increase number of roster protections (for next yr) Proposal to change: There is a proposal to increase the number of protects each team gets, to save time at the draft and allow for better preparation for the following year. Ideas have ranged from adding one or two all the way to allowing as many as you think are worth it. We'll vote whether to add or not, and we'll vote on a couple of options. If approved, would take effect with the 2001 Roster protections, not this year. Current: Number of Keepers + Toppers (any mix) allowed League Has 7 8 9 7-9 teams 1st 2nd,3rd,last 4th-next to last 10-11 teams 1st,2nd 3rd,4th,last 5th-next to last 12 teams 1st,2nd 3rd,4th,5th,12th 6th-11th Choice 1: This proposal adds one to the 1st and 3rd place teams, 2 to everyone else. This separates the first place team into getting less than 2nd place, since they took most of our money the previous season. Number of Keepers + Toppers (any mix) allowed League Has 8 9 10 11 7-9 teams 1st 2nd 3rd,last 4th-next to last 10-11 teams 1st 2nd 3rd,4th,last 5th-next to last 12 teams 1st 2nd,3rd 4th,5th,12th 6th-11th Choice 2: Just adds two to every team, so 1st and 2nd get 9, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and last place get 10, 6th to 11th get 11. Choice 3: Just adds three to every team, so 1st and 2nd get 10, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and last place get 11, 6th to 11th get 12. FOR: Saves between 1/2 hour and 1 hour at the draft, if most of the extra protects are keepers, offsetting the time for the Bench Draft proposal above. Allows for more roster preparation for the following year. Allows better recovery from an off-year. AGAINST: More good players may be tied up each year without the chance to get them. Allows a roster dumper to get even stronger for the next season, perhaps with more questionable trades. If the additional protects used are toppers, it won't save draft time for those. VOTE: YES or NO should we add roster protections ALSO VOTE: IF we add, how many? Choice 1 or 2 or 3